How Can You Have Trust When It Feels Like Your Life is Falling Apart?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if somehow we knew for certain that things would always work out the way we wanted them to? Imagine if we had some guarantee that nothing bad was going to happen to us in the future. Then we would be able to enjoy our lives without the fear that it could all be taking away from us at any moment. Life isn’t like this though, and trust is a harder proposition when we are facing an uncertain future.

Worry

For years, my response to an uncertainty was to worry. I did what I could to create some security but improvements to my life circumstances didn’t necessary lead to a reduction in my anxiety levels – it just meant I now had more to lose. I remember how the birth of my son raised my fear to a new disturbing level, and there were so many days when I felt crippled by the terror that I would let him and my wife down.

Going through periods of worry is a small price to pay (and I’d gladly pay it) if it somehow makes us better able to handle the future. The problem is that it often has the opposite effect. It can make us completely dysfunctional and so caught up in negativity that we can’t see a way out. It can easily lead to desperation and thoughts of suicide.

Desperately Seeking Reassurance

Living with so much fear isn’t fun, and like many before me, I desperately sought a solution. It took a while, but I eventually realized that chemically numbing myself with alcohol wasn’t going to work. This just turned my life from a bit of a nightmare to a total shit-fest.

I began investigating other avenues such as positive thinking, affirmations, rational thinking, magical thinking, praying/begging the universe, and self-hypnosis. I had also been engaging in a meditation practice for decades with the secret hope of eventually being able to transcend life and living out the rest of my days on a bliss-cloud. All of these approaches appeared to help in the beginning, but then something unexpected would happen, and I would be once again full of fear.

There is No Escape from Uncertainty

As William Blake so eloquently observed. ‘the fool who persists in his folly will become wise’. I eventually reached a point where it became undeniable that there is no escape from uncertainty. Life is always going to do its thing, and as the Christian mystic Anthony de Mello noted , the only sane response is ‘absolute cooperation with the inevitable‘. Everything changed for me when instead of trying to control the future, I began focusing on how I was relating to what is happening now.

I not only came to accept uncertainty, I began to adore it. I thought about our ancestors and their struggle to survive. How many people over the centuries had to face uncertainty, so we get to exist today? We are far from perfect, but I realized that all our best attributes as humans come from this ability to face such fears – without it, there would be no compassion, no bravery, and no progress. All of us humans play a part in the story of humanity, and it is our dance with uncertainty that moves the story forward. When I began facing my fears as a service I undertook on behalf of humanity, it all became so much easier.

Imagine a salesperson who was only willing to attempt a sale when the outcome was guaranteed . It just wouldn’t work would it. To be a good salesperson you have to love the hunt, and there is no hunt without the chance of failure. I would imagine those who succeed in this business aren’t the ones who fall apart when a sale is lost. Instead, they use this as an opportunity to improve their selling technique so next time they do make the sale. There is a way of relating to uncertainty that we could all benefit from.

How to Trust

Trust is not something we do, but something we come to realize. It is the recognition that we don’t control what is happening, but we do control how we relate to what is happening.

It is our resistance to life that is the real source of suffering, and when we stop resisting, we discover an unshakable peace – a peace that passeth all understanding.

There is a drive within humanity to survive and thrive, and we begin to trust this drive to get us through any challenges that come our way in the future. We start to see how we interfere with this drive when we become contracted by fear.

When we trust life, rather than resisting it, or trying to impose our will on it, everything changes. Our action starts to be governed by passion rather than fear. We access a wisdom and confidence that is way beyond anything we previously had access to. We can then see uncertainty as our most beloved friend ready to whisk us off on our next adventure. We get something better than being fearless (there is a thin line between being fearless and being reckless) – we stop being afraid of our fear.

In this video, I share a technique that I’ve found useful when dealing with anxiety and worry.

If you are struggling with uncertainty about the future, why not consider some online sessions with me? I can share with you a way of making peace with such fears that has worked for me and many others. You can find out more by clicking here.

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